Observe a laboratory activity or base your answer on past visits. How does your CT conduct a typical laboratory activity? How does he or she open the activity and organize student groups? How do students learn what they're expected to do during the period? Reflect on your reading about inquiry and your experience with the NECAP inquiry task. How did the laboratory activity you observe prepare students for the type of activities that might show up on the NECAP in the future? What inquiry elements would you strengthen? What science practices do you want to stress when you're teaching?
I observed a college prep Chemistry class that was doing a lab on Saponification. My CT started the class by reiterating important knowledge from their previous discussion about this experiment. She then modeled, step by step, everything the students would be doing once they began their experiment. She showed everything from picking out glassware, to retrieving reagents, to how to clean up the lab bench. She also discussed safety procedures and what to do if something were to go wrong. Students were allowed to pick their partner to work with during the experiment. Once the students began the experiment, my CT constantly walked around to each lab group and checked on their progress. Two groups accidentally spilled their experiment and the teacher immediately responded to the accident.
I think that this experiment was well prepared by the teacher and well executed by the students. Accidents are bound to happen, but my CT handled it well and didn't make it out to be a huge mistake or problem. It was good that she stressed the safety procedures and which chemicals were dangerous to come into direct contact with. To strengthen the inquiry in this experiment, I would not have given the students the correct amounts of reagents to use. This would require them to decide on their own how much of each chemical to use. If the amount they used was wrong, they could re-do the experiment using different amounts. This would stress that trial and error is necessary and an always present component in scientific discovery. I would like to stress that trial and error is important to science when I teach because students will learn that the first method may not always be the best.
I observed a college prep Chemistry class that was doing a lab on Saponification. My CT started the class by reiterating important knowledge from their previous discussion about this experiment. She then modeled, step by step, everything the students would be doing once they began their experiment. She showed everything from picking out glassware, to retrieving reagents, to how to clean up the lab bench. She also discussed safety procedures and what to do if something were to go wrong. Students were allowed to pick their partner to work with during the experiment. Once the students began the experiment, my CT constantly walked around to each lab group and checked on their progress. Two groups accidentally spilled their experiment and the teacher immediately responded to the accident.
I think that this experiment was well prepared by the teacher and well executed by the students. Accidents are bound to happen, but my CT handled it well and didn't make it out to be a huge mistake or problem. It was good that she stressed the safety procedures and which chemicals were dangerous to come into direct contact with. To strengthen the inquiry in this experiment, I would not have given the students the correct amounts of reagents to use. This would require them to decide on their own how much of each chemical to use. If the amount they used was wrong, they could re-do the experiment using different amounts. This would stress that trial and error is necessary and an always present component in scientific discovery. I would like to stress that trial and error is important to science when I teach because students will learn that the first method may not always be the best.